


Far Away And Long Ago

by Ragdoll (Keshka)



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Time Travel, Angst with a Happy Ending, Avengers Family, Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Spoilers, Fix-It, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, News Media, Not Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Compliant, On Hiatus, Past Peggy Carter/Steve Rogers, Past Pepper Potts/Tony Stark, Period-Typical Homophobia, Pining, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Time Travel Fix-It
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-03
Updated: 2019-05-19
Packaged: 2020-02-16 18:19:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 18,497
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18696778
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Keshka/pseuds/Ragdoll
Summary: Steve steps into the past and discovers that hope held on a pedestal is as insubstantial as smoke.  Then he sees Tony.  And that's when things get complicated.Full summary contained within.(Serious spoilers for Endgame.  You have been duly warned!)





	1. (What’s Past Is) Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Steve steps into the past and discovers that hope held on a pedestal is as insubstantial as smoke. Then he sees Tony walking and talking and laughing, like he hadn't died and taken a part of Steve with him a week and a lifetime ago. And that's when things get complicated.

Steve knows it's the wrong thing to do.  Not only because in 1970, Steven Grant Rogers was asleep in the ice on a continental shelf far from here, but also because the danger of being found at this point in the timeline brought with it a whole host of potential complications.  Most of which Steve had no capacity to fix.

Steve risks it anyway.  He can't not.

Peggy's office is just as he remembers it.  Simple and utilitarian.  The same picture of him on her desk, his own gaunt features and scrawny limbs dressed in a baggy shirt and camouflage uniform.  He vaguely remembers the days of clothing that never fit and limbs too uncoordinated to climb rope.  It felt like a lifetime ago.

It's dark, and that's to be expected.  That was the point; he'd needed the cover of night to sneak back into the base.  Steve had planned it a hundred different ways.  He'd slip in, he'd wait; he'd stay until morning.  Hide in the ventilation shafts, or in the nook beside the filing cabinet, or in a closet, or behind the door.  Anywhere.  He'd keep one hand on the watch so he could vanish at the first sign he'd been spotted.  She didn't have to see him; he just needed to see her.  One last time. 

If she did see him, even for just a moment, he could snap out before the truth had even registered.  An early morning mirage; the barest edge of a dream, not even fully realized before he was gone.  He imagined the look on her face in the split second before he went.  He could see the shock, the awe, the disbelief that might turn to joy or fear or maybe anger.  He thought about all the ways it might go wrong, and all the ways he needed it to go right.

But in all the ways Steve imagined it could happen, he never considered she might be waiting for him.

She gave him enough time to open and shut the door; enough time to look up and see her and freeze into shocked, horrified stillness.  Then she spoke.

"Hello Steve," Peggy said.

"Peggy," Steve said, and nothing more.  His brain had shorted out somewhere; he couldn't force it to translate words to his mouth.

She was sitting in the shadows beside the desk.  There was a pen at right angles to her seat.  A pad of paper turned over, an unfilled mug at the corner.  She had her hands folded neatly over one knee, crossed atop the other.

She looked at him, and there was a very faint tremble at the corner of her lips, in spite of all her best efforts to press them stern and flat.  Steve probably wouldn't have seen it, except that he was looking for it, because the knuckles of both her hands were white and bloodless with tension.

"I wondered if you might show up again," Peggy said into the silence.

"How did you know I was here?" Steve asked, taking an unsteady step forward.

Peggy blinked slowly at him, obviously considering how much she wanted to say.  "Closed circuit security footage.  You were on the base yesterday."

Steve closed his eyes.  It had taken them the better part of a week in the future to pick out the most likely location to return the Tesseract.  Tony hadn't been able to tell them exactly which storage unit he'd taken it from.  He'd died before –

But Steve wasn't going to think about that.  He wasn't.

Part of a week, and upon arrival Steve had still needed another day to avoid all the extra security personnel in place.  Pym particles were apparently a hot commodity; their theft had sent the entire base into a swarming frenzy of alarms and lockdowns and battalions of armed patrols.  It was a lot of trial and error and two harrowing near-misses before Steve was able to successfully put the Tesseract back in its storage container (maybe – hopefully – the right one).

It had been foolish to stay longer.  But looking at her face now, Steve couldn't bring himself to regret it.

"I thought things seemed too easy once I got to this section," he said, stepping closer.  "Did you clear the way?"

"I kept security forces to a visible minimum," Peggy said, watching him approach.  "There are of course a number of additional personnel awaiting my orders.  And I'm afraid you'll find escaping from this base quite a bit more difficult today than you did yesterday."

Steve stopped, considering that with some surprise.  "You think I'm the enemy?"

Peggy's expression didn't change, her eyes remaining sharp and watchful.  "I think you're someone who stole classified technology and somehow managed to disappear from this base with it while leaving no trace behind.  I think accomplishing that task would require specific skills which I'm certain I don't want to leave in the wrong hands."

"Peggy –"

"And I think," Peggy said overtop him, diamond hard and implacable, "that you're someone who looks a great deal like a man who's been missing and presumed dead for  _twenty-five years_."

She let that settle like an anvil between them.

"It's not what you're thinking," Steve said, because in all the scenarios he'd imagined, he'd never thought he'd have to  _explain._

"You have no idea what I'm thinking," Peggy said.  "Who are you?  And why are you wearing the face of a national hero who –"

Steve took another step toward her and suddenly she had a gun up and pointing at him, serious with grim and deadly intent.

Steve stopped.  Not because the gun was any real threat to him; even at this range he had good odds of surviving anything but a direct shot to the heart or brain, and that was assuming he couldn't dodge it altogether.  He was very fast.

He stopped because the sight of her aiming at him was so reminiscent of that first day he'd found the shield that he could feel nostalgia trying to sneak in underneath his feet so it could sweep him away.

He took a breath and released it.  Told himself to wait, shelve the sentiment; be the solider just a little while longer.  "It was never about being a hero.  You know that."

Her eyes widened a fraction before narrowing again.  The gun didn't waver.  "Steve Rogers was well known for his altruism."

"But not for his tendency to break the rules," Steve said.  "Or for how much he hated being a performing monkey for the USO."

Calculation faded into the first inklings of doubt.  "You could've heard that from anyone.  Just by asking the right question to the right person, at the right time –"

"Or his complete inability to get drunk."

"An obvious extrapolation of the serum's affects –"

"Or how terrible he was," Steve finished quietly, "at talking to women."

Peggy stood up, one hand fisted at her side and the gun held level.  She was staring at him like she'd seen a ghost.  "You can't be him.  It's not possible."

Steve drank in the sight of her, the disbelief and surprise softening the hard edges, but not eliminating them.  "Did you really wait for me, that night?"

Peggy stepped around her desk, almost running into it because she wouldn't take her eyes off his face.  "What night?"

"Eight o'clock, at  the Stork Club.  Did you really –"

Peggy made a terrible noise, with real pain in her eyes.  The gun loosened from her grip and Steve took it from her before anything unintended could happen.  She reached for him with uncoordinated limbs, like she wasn't sure what she might find if she touched him.  Steve reached back.

The second Steve kissed her, he knew.

The initial surprise, the joy, the longed-for thrill of taking her in his arms, of having a part of his past returned; all that hit him like a ton of bricks.  He couldn't remember the last time he'd felt so elated, so right.  Like something missing had been found and restored to where it should be.  He was finally stepping back into a place he knew.  Coming home after a lifetime gone.

But the touch of their lips; the slender feel of her fingers on his face, the way she turned into him.  The press of her curves against his chest, the sweep of her hair against his cheek and neck.  The way she said his name when he pulled her close.

It wasn't what Steve expected.  It was off-beat.  The hands were wrong; the soft curves were wrong.  The voice was wrong.

It left him cold.

Peggy knew it, too.  Steve could feel her happy disbelief turn to surprise when he froze.  He sensed the initial excitement transform into caution.

When he pulled back, it was to find her staring up at him with some of that calculation back in her eyes.  She didn't move out of his arms, but Steve had the sudden miserable thought that was only because he was holding onto her so tightly.

He let her go by slow, agonizing inches, and it felt like losing a part of himself.  He'd been feeling like that a lot lately.

"Steve?" Peggy asked slowly, watching him.  "What's wrong?"

Steve silently shook his head, taking a half-step back.  He put the gun on the table.  He was chilled; bereft, even.He was seeing dreams on a pedestal crumbling slowly into ash.  It felt like watching hope losing its shine.

It felt like watching Tony fading away with all Steve's unspoken regrets, his heart seizing on the impossibility of a death he'd never braced for.A friendship that could've been something else, once, and never was because Steve had been too stubborn, and hopelessly lost in a past out of his reach, and Tony had never bent his will for anyone or anything.It was realizing he was tied up in a man who would never have eyes for him, and now would never have eyes for anything, because he –

But Steve wasn't thinking about that.  He wasn't.

Peggy traced her eyes over his face like she was maybe seeing him for the first time.  She raised a hand, gently rubbing a longer piece of his hair between her fingers.  Steve didn't have to look to know she'd find some gray that hadn't been there the last time she'd seen him.

They hadn’t been sure he could age normally, once.  Before.

"What happened to you, Steve?" Peggy asked, still staring at him, skimming her hand down his chest, his arm.  "It's been twenty-five years since you were MIA.  Where have you been?"

"It's a long story," Steve said quietly.  He looked down.  "And there really isn't time to tell it.  I'd have come sooner, if I could.  But I couldn't."

"No time to tell it," Peggy repeated, seeing the more careworn lines of his face, his eyes.

"You weren't meant to see me here," Steve said quietly.  "I still have work I have to do, before I can –"

_ Come home, _ he'd meant to say.  Because even before he'd stepped back into the past, he'd known.  He wasn't going back. Not to 2023.  He was returning to the only life he'd ever really known, to a time where things had made sense; to that life Tony had always told him he needed to get.

But the past was as lost to Steve as the future.He was adrift with no anchor.Steve was looking at Peggy, the striking lines of her face, the strength and courage and beauty of her, and he loved her and always had and always would.  But he looked at her, and he felt cold.

She wasn't for him, anymore.

He wasn't for her.

"Before you can what?" Peggy prompted.

Steve smiled at her painfully.  "Never mind.Nothing."

"Steve -"

"I shouldn't have come here," he murmured."I need you to forget you ever saw me."

"I can't do that," she said, and he thought maybe she meant more than just the impossibility of forgetting his presence.  There was the steel of a Director in her voice; she was more than just a woman he'd loved, and she always had been.  She was a government agent in her own right, one of the best.  And she needed more than just his word that he was still on their side.

"They don't pull me out of the ice for another forty years, Peggy," Steve said.  "If you don't forget you saw me here, they might never."

He saw her eyes widen, pupils contracting in the low light.  "You can't be serious."

Steve gave her the wrist band, watching her fingers close automatically around it.  She raised it to eye level, a dazzle of unnatural light shining across her cheeks like stars flickering across the night sky.

"Don't press anything," Steve said while she ran careful fingers over the control mechanism, interested but not overwhelmed by the piece of future technology she had in her hands.  "Tony locked them so they’d only respond to a single user.But still."

Peggy briefly lifted her eyes back to his.  "Tony?"

Steve pressed his mouth into a thin line and looked away.  He couldn't talk about Tony with Peggy.  The idea of it was absurd.  Obscene."A friend."

"Something you have in abundance?" she asked.  "In this supposed future of yours?"

The raw edges of grief prickled at Steve, still so fresh.  They'd lost and regained so much, and so many, in so short a time.  But the most recent sacrifices stung the most.Natasha had given her life for a friend; Tony for a universe.

"Not exactly," Steve said.

Peggy gave him the watch back silently.  When he took it, he paused a second to cradle her hand in his.  He let his fingers catch on the simple gold band on her left forth finger.  He'd seen it earlier, when she'd gotten up from her chair.  Felt it, when she'd reached for him.   He turned the ring just slightly with the edge of his thumb, then let her hand fall away from him.He didn't ask.

She didn't offer.  "What did you need the Pym particles for?"

"I can't tell you that," Steve said.  "Or anything else.I know you have questions.I’m sorry I can’t answer them.I'm still hoping you can pretend I was never here."

Peggy smiled, just slightly.  "That's not how it works, Steve."

"This is a spy agency," Steve said, returning the smile gamely.  "Isn't that exactly how it works?"

He reached for her again, wondering if she'd turn him away this time.  She didn't, but she did evade his hands when he made to pull her close.Instead she rose on the balls of her feet to press a gentle, chaste kiss against his mouth.  Steve thought this time he might, maybe –

But no.  He still felt cold with it.

She leaned back and looked over his face again, understanding shining from her eyes.  "It’s not there anymore, is it?  Not for you."

Steve let out a long, slow breath.  "No."

She watched him closely, moving back with two carefully controlled steps.  "There's someone else?"

Steve hesitated, because that hit closer to the mark than she could possibly understand, and yet still missed by a very wide margin.

"Not exactly," he repeated.

He had so much he wanted to tell her, so much he wanted to say.  But it wasn't the right time; it never would be.  He reached for the watch instead.

"Are you happy, Steve?" Peggy asked quietly.

Steve looked at her from the edge of a past he couldn't go back to, a future he could barely stand, and a present that was only duty.  He felt heat prickle at his eyes and shut them tightly as he keyed in the sequence for a time and place far from here.

"Not exactly," he murmured.

And then he was gone.


	2. Chapter 2

Steve didn't intentionally save the Scepter for last.  That was accidental.

After the Tesseract, the rest of the stones reclaimed their place in time without much difficulty.  Some required conversations Steve had no desire to repeat, with people Steve would've been happy enough never meeting again.  Others were as simple as tiptoeing around someone lying on the ground and escaping before they could regain consciousness.

The Aether was a notable exception.  Steve was fairly certain the only reason he survived that particular encounter was because Thor's mother was an amazing woman who lived up to the crown she didn't actually wear.

The Scepter was different.  The Scepter required returning to a place where Steve's face was not only readily recognizable, but where he'd put himself in the precarious position of returning something he'd taken under extremely false pretenses.

Steve stared grimly up at Stark Tower, six city blocks and a disaster zone away, and wondered at the best place to start.

"Can I get you anything?" a voice asked cheerfully.  "More coffee?"

Steve glanced over to find one of the food severs standing at his elbow, a pen and paper in her hands.  He belatedly looked down at the full mug sitting by his elbow, untouched while he'd silently brooded on half-formed and discarded plans.

"Uh," Steve said, raising it up to his mouth, grimacing at the cold, bitter taste.  "No, thanks."

"You new here?" she asked, quirking a smile.  "Sightseeing?  You picked a bad time for it.  Unless you wanted to see aliens."

"Guess I did," Steve said, deliberately not clarifying which part he meant.

Her smile warmed a bit, becoming something slightly less than professional.  "You looking to see anything else while you're here?"

Steve looked down.  There was a time he wouldn't have recognized her flirting for what it was.  Even now he did, he still had little enough idea what to do with it.

"Here on business," Steve said, trying out a shrug to soften the blow.  "Not pleasure.  Sorry."

She shrugged back, philosophical; thankfully she seemed willing to take that at face value.  "Too bad.  No more coffee, you're sure?"

Steve dropped a handful of bills on the table, standing with one final glance at the distant tower.  "I'm sure.  Thanks."

Two days, and Steve hadn't managed to come within more than a few blocks of his target.  Day one had been spent finding his way to the roof of a sanctum that seemed to hum to Steve's enhanced senses.  Day two –

"Come on guys," someone called, grunting with exertion.  "Just a little bit further.  I've almost got him.  Just another foot.  Come on –"

The structure was unsound; Steve could hear it collapsing before it actually happened, and he could see the two people in the path of falling debris.  Duty told Steve to remain silent.  His rudimentary understanding of how time travel worked urged him to walk away, let it happen.  It had undoubtedly happened before; these people must've died years ago, to Steve's view.  They were already gone and buried.

But Steve didn't have it in him to ignore people in need.  He never had.

He caught the leading edge of the wall before it could manage to come down on top of anyone, propping it up with his shoulder and arm in what he hoped managed to be a casual pose.  "Hey.  Careful, guys.  I don't think this area's quite secure yet."

"We know," one of them gasped, red faced and struggling against a burden too heavy for unenhanced arms to hold.  "But there's a kid.  He's trapped.  We heard him crying."

Steve could hear it too, someone taking in deep, gasping sobs of air, whimpering in the hollow pocket left by giant slabs of unstable rock coming together.

"You should've called it in.  They have search and rescue working around the clock now."  Steve let more of the wall settle against him, heavy but not unmanageable; he heard the others catch their breath with relief, some of their impossible burden lifting.

"Two days trapped, man," one of them said, sweat trickling down his forehead.  "Can't wait.  Can't walk away."

Steve sighed, understanding that sentiment entirely too well.  "I know.  Step back a second.  You take the other side with me, we'll lift.  You two get ready to drag the kid out.  Ready?  On three.  Two. One –"

Steve had lived in the wreck of a planet for five long years, scavenging hollow ruins for people who simply weren't there to be found.  Somewhere along the way he'd forgotten what it was like to search and actually have a chance of discovering someone.  Seeing them drag the child to freedom, streaked with dirt and tears, but alive - it hit him like the wall _had_ actually fallen on them.

New York might've been a mistake.  Not only because of the chaos the city lay in, which they'd thought might work in their favour while they pulled off the time heist, and which now worked against him.  But because it had too many memories in it, ones Steve had put aside and buried a long time ago.  And because Steve was beginning to suspect returning the Scepter to SHIELD with no one the wiser might be impossible.

The plan had been to return it to the New York SHIELD headquarters on 47th.  But that'd fallen through, mostly because it looked like the Chitauri had made short work of that particular city block and left little but rubble behind.  Steve had taken some guilty but grim satisfaction in seeing it.

Unfortunately, it left Steve with few remaining, convenient options.

So days three and four found him at another café, another city block closer to Stark tower.

Steve didn't lie to himself that the tower was the only way.  There were other possibilities beyond this building.  If Steve were willing to relocate to DC, he could be guaranteed to find SHIELD safe-houses he actually knew in person.  They might be infested with Hydra, but that was a difficulty that would be eliminated in just a few short years.  At this point the reality of Hydra and Zola was unmistakable and unchangeable.

Steve couldn't think about Bucky.  He couldn't imagine Hydra having him while Steve went on his merry way restoring the timeline to rights while his best friend –

Steve had told the person who mattered most.  He'd planted a seed that could only grow from confusion into certainty.  That would have to do.

Day five found him just across from the tower's main lobby, sitting at another table with another cold cup of coffee.  This time Steve was the one with a pen and paper.  He started to draw the architecture, but something about that sent a feeling of crippling déjà vu through him powerful enough that for a moment he almost felt like an echo of himself.  A ghost come from a far-off place; a man truly out of time.

He switched from drawing buildings to drawing something closer to his heart.  He started with the concentric rings of his shield.  He kept going with Clint's arrows, and Thor's hammer (Steve's hammer) and Hulk's everything.  Then Natasha.  Just her face, with its coldly practical lines and well-hidden kindness.  Tony –

Someone pulled out the chair across from Steve and sat down.

Steve looked up and felt reality and fantasy merge together for one heart-stopping moment of breathtaking confusion.

"Tony," Steve said blankly.

"Hi," Tony replied, and the youth and vitality of him, the friendliness and unexpected warmth in his voice; the sight of him _alive_.  It was all an incredible breath of life, a healing balm to Steve's bruised and battered soul.  "Anyone sitting here?"

Steve opened and closed his mouth, feeling for a moment too thoroughly shaken to conjure words.  "I – no."

A wide smile appeared and Steve was completely bowled over by the sight of it.  "Cool.  Mind if I join?"

"It's a free country," Steve managed in something resembling a normal voice.

Tony leaned back, still smiling.  "Yeah, it is.  And we plan to keep it that way."

Steve smiled back helplessly.  It'd been a long time since he heard that bedrock conviction in Tony's voice.  The certainty that victory could be achieved, and all it needed was a strong enough fight to obtain it.  "I'm glad."

"Sure you are," Tony said, and Steve was jarred back to reality when that welcoming smile vanished to reveal the badly hidden antagonism trapped beneath.

The hostility didn't surprise Steve necessarily; he'd gotten used to a certain level of animosity between he and Tony over the years.  But this was something else; it felt thick with contempt more than anger, and also somehow strangely misplaced.  Beyond which, this Tony didn't _know_ Steve, so –

But, of course, Steve realized.  His past self had already introduced Steve to the obvious explanation.  When two men walked around with the same face where before there'd been only one, there were only so many conclusions to draw.

Steve carefully put both his hands on the table as a sign of peace, palms down with fingers spread to show he had nothing hidden in his grasp.  "I take it Loki's still at large?"

"Not anymore," Tony said breezily.  He made no move to return the gesture of good faith.  The scientist had one hand in sight, resting along the back of the chair he'd sat in, but the other was below Steve's eye-line.  He had no doubt that Tony had a weapon or other device stashed just out of sight, ready to pull at the slightest provocation.

Steve decided he wouldn't tell Tony there was probably very little he could reasonably do to stop Steve if it came down to a fight.  At this point in the timeline, Tony's suits still needed time and opportunity to deploy.  Time that Steve knew better than to give him.

"I'm not Loki," Steve said quietly.

"I believe you," Tony replied, very insincerely.

Steve leaned back far enough to make his skepticism clear.  "If I _was_ Loki, why would I come back here and sit across from your tower drinking coffee in plain sight?"

Tony didn't look at all phased by the absurdity of it.  "To plan my grisly demise as a first step toward a new world order?"

Steve tried to smile, play it off as a joke, but he couldn't quite manage it.  He looked away, pressing his lips into a hard line.  "Only you would joke about your own murder."

When he looked back, it was to find Tony staring at him with something watchful in the lines of his face.  "A habit I picked up after you threw me off the top of my tower."

Steve shook his head, amused by the sheer farce of it.  "Like I said, you've got the wrong guy.  What are you doing out here, Tony?  I hope you don't confront all assumed Asgardian escapees wearing just your Sunday best."

Tony looked down at his three-piece business attire, brushing off the cuffs with negligent hands.  "Well, we can't all sit down to coffee and pull off a white tactical-vest motif like yours."

Steve didn't bother looking down at his clothes; he'd had to find a few things to supplement the less-than-subtle body armor he'd travelled here with.  The result wasn't ideal, but it was better than nothing.  "Thanks.  You should stick to red and gold next time."

"It brings out my eyes, I know," Tony said.  "I hear you prefer green.  Or blue, as the occasion demands.  What happened to your antlers, Reindeer Games?  Leave them back at the North Pole?"

Steve smiled, shaking his head.  "You're never going to believe I'm not Loki, are you?"

Tony widened his eyes as though the very idea were unthinkable.  "Nope."

Steve sighed.  "Guess it wouldn't be the first time I've been accused of it.  I must have one of those faces."

"You do seem like the evil wizard type."

"What does that look like, exactly?"

"Tall, dark and megalomaniac," Tony said promptly.

Steve smirked and watched Tony blink at the sight of it.  "Think you just described yourself."

"I'm not that tall."

Steve gave that a beat of silence before nodding thoughtfully.  "True enough."

Tony shot him an annoyed frown before seeming to recall they weren't here to exchange afternoon pleasantries.  "Amusing as this is, maybe you could do me a favor and hand over the Tesseract before we have to repeat what went down in Germany."

They'd talked about that ad nauseam in the future.  Loki's escape created an irreparable breach in the timeline.  But Steve couldn't fix that; not today, at least.  He had other missions to finish first.

"Can't help you with the Tesseract," Steve said.  "Would you take a Scepter instead?"

"Depends on how you're planning to hand it over," Tony said.  "If you're going to stab me with it, I'll pass.  How exactly did you get your hands on it again, anyway?  I thought SHIELD was in the midst of warehousing it until you turned up like a bandit on the fourteenth floor."

Steve thought about meeting Rumlow and his compatriots in the elevator, the skin-crawling wrongness of the words he'd uttered there.  "I asked."

Tony hummed with consideration.  "Guess when you have a brainwashing glowstick on hand, that's all you have to do.  No more performance issues, huh?"

Steve frowned.  "Performance issues?"

Tony frowned back, something suspicious in his eyes.  "You certainly got the drop on Cap with it.  He was a blue-eyed zombie for a day, before Widow clocked him and reduced him back to a blue-eyed national icon instead."

"I'm surprised you don't consider those two things one and the same," Steve said.

The suspicion deepened.  "Actually, that's exactly what I said."

Steve smiled; he couldn't help it.  "Of course it is."

Tony nodded.  "Congratulations, by the way.  You really sent Rogers into a tailspin the minute he woke up.  That line about Barnes being alive was inspired.  You couldn't have found a softer spot to hit him if you'd tried."

"I _was_ trying," Steve said.  "I needed him out of the way long enough to disappear."

Tony leaned forward, putting himself dangerously close to Steve's personal space.  Steve frowned disapprovingly; if he really _had_ been the enemy, that would've been too close by a wide margin.  For a genius, Tony could be a real idiot sometimes. 

"What interests me," Tony started in a low and intimate voice that invited Steve to lean closer; he tried to resist and lost.  "Is why you didn't send Cap off to do your bidding like a good little minion.  Instead you just knocked him out.  Not exactly prize-winning scheming, there.  Pretty obvious missed opportunity.  Did they revoke your evil wizard card for that one?"

"I never had one to revoke," Steve replied, equally intimate and close.  "Remember?  I'm not him."

"Right," Tony said, leaning back again to stare narrowly.  "So you've said."

Steve looked down and felt the lingering shadow of the smile slide off his face.  It'd been a long time since Tony was willing to talk openly like this with Steve.  In the beginning Steve had been too caught up in his own losses to see Tony's banter for what it was; the dark humor of a genius so used to defending himself from others that he lashed out before anyone else could do it first.  Steve had taken everything personally, back then.  He'd felt attacked, so he'd attacked back.  It had taken almost until Ultron before Steve realized his head and heart were turning in Tony's direction, before the barbs of Tony's humor had started to make sense to him.

Of course, after that there were more things that simple humor tearing them apart.

Steve took a breath, feeling his dutiful conviction starting to waver.  The end was approaching like a finish line in the distance; a victory bell ringing low and hollow.  "Are you still in touch with Clint and Natasha?"

Tony made a noncommittal sound.  "I might be.  Why?  Didn't think you'd be all that eager to see Clint again any time soon.  Pretty sure he's going to put an arrow in your face the first chance he gets."

Steve couldn't leave the Scepter with Tony alone; he'd seen what Tony's desire to protect the world could do, untempered.  Ultron was a time bomb waiting to happen, but it couldn't happen today.  The Scepter had to go to SHIELD.  "There's a storage locker near Grand Central.  45th and Lexington.  You'll find the Scepter there."

Tony's eyebrows shot up.  "You stashed the Scepter in a public-access storage locker?"

"Not exactly.  You'll need Clint or Natasha to figure it out.  Tell them to close their eyes and think of Budapest."

Tony stared at him.  "What the hell does that mean?"

"It's a good story," Steve said, rising, feeling himself start to unravel. "You should ask them about it some time.  Nat tells it best."

Steve knew he shouldn't do it. Duty and obligation said not to, and common sense agreed. But he had to; he couldn't simply leave without _knowing_.  He couldn't wait another twelve years to discover he'd put broken dreams on a pedestal that couldn't be reached.  One from which he'd never move on.

Steve reached for Tony as if from underwater.  He felt slow with it, but he wasn't.  He was fast.  Too fast; he saw Tony's eyes widen with alarm, saw him start to jerk backward, evading.

Steve caught him before he could get far, yanked him halfway across the table until Tony was almost in his lap, and kissed him.

And there; that was it.  That was the spark he'd been missing.  The rush of heat; the ripple of electric awareness; the pit of desire in his belly.  The thrill of blunt fingers latching onto his own, the hard press of a flat torso with a mechanical hum at its center, the brush and prickle of stubble across his lips and jaw.  All things that had been absent, before.  All things Steve had trained himself through the years not to want, until he'd almost forgotten he ever had.

Steve had thought about kissing Peggy, his princess in a tower, in the full force of daylight for all the world to see.  But he'd dreamed of kissing Tony in the dark, in the privacy of his own bed, with nothing but an arc reactor and gentle laughter to guide him through the shadows.

"I'm sorry," Steve whispered when he finally pulled away, looking into Tony's dazed and startled face, tracing his eyes over every part of it he could see, imprinting it forever in his memory.  "I shouldn't have.  I told myself I wasn't going to.  But it's my last chance.  It was now or never."

Steve closed his eyes, knowing it was time, that there was nothing else keeping him here, nothing else to do.  Steve could finally rest, too, and it wasn't the way he'd ever imagined or wanted things to be.  It just was.

"I'll miss you, Tony," Steve said quietly, and reached for the wrist band on his left hand, and –

The watch wasn't there.

Steve's eyes flew open, shocked.  He saw the addled expression on Tony's face subside into something much more familiar: Smug superiority.

"Sorry," Tony said, and some distant part of Steve was thrilled at the genuine breathlessness he could hear in that usually unflappable voice.  But the more immediate part of him was frozen with horror.  "Can't have you leaving too soon.  Why don't you put me down and grab another seat?  We still have so much to talk about."

"Where is it?" Steve asked, standing tall enough to drag Tony forward over the table entirely.  He was dimly aware of people shouting and moving around them somewhere in the background.

"Safe," Tony gasped, breathless for a whole new reason as he struggled to inhale around his own tie choking him.

"Do better than that," Steve ordered, easing off just far enough to let Tony suck in air.  "Where?"

Tony was still struggling, the awkward position putting him at a disadvantage, and there was real pain on his face.  Steve belatedly considered the beating each of them had taken during the battle in New York, the damage Tony had acquired in his fall back to Earth.  He lowered Tony far enough down to catch his knees on the table.

"Sorry," Steve said awkwardly.  "Forgot about the rib fractures."

Tony still didn't say anything, staring from Steve's face down to the hand Steve had braced against his chest, just above where the faint thickness of bandages could've been felt if Tony hadn't been wearing a bespoke suit worth more than anything Steve had ever owned in his life.

"You should be sorry," Tony said, the faintest note of accusation in his voice; he tried to tug away, probably to see if Steve would let him.  He didn't.  "They're basically your fault."

Technically, Steve thought they might be Hulk's fault; that catch at the end hadn't been gentle by any stretch of imagination.  But this wasn't the time.

"You don't understand what you're doing," Steve said, keeping hold of Tony with one hand so he could search his pockets with the other.  "You have to give it back."

"Hey, hands off," Tony said, trying and failing to dodge him.  "I only allow public groping on the third date.  You haven't even bought me dinner yet."

As if on cue, the sounds of the outside world filtered back into Steve's ears excruciatingly.  He caught the babble of scandalized whispers from the café's other patrons, the shocked titters from people near and far away, the digital snap of pictures being taken.  Steve did his best to ignore it while he searched Tony, something that sent a new wave of excited titillation through the crowd.

Steve flipped through every fold and tuck of material Tony had on him.  The closest he found to anything of use was the engineer's cell phone, active with a red light flickering.

Steve picked it up, looking at the blinking signal.  "Who's on the other side of this?  SHIELD?"  He shook his head, already knowing the answer.  "No, they wouldn't let you out here without at least the suit.  JARVIS?"

For the first time Tony looked uncertain, glancing at the phone with its accusing light.  "I didn't realize you'd already had a formal introduction."

"He hasn't, sir," JARVIS said over the speaker.

Steve made a show of gently setting the phone on the table, in spite of the fact he could've crushed it in one hand.  He saw from the narrow line of Tony's eyes that he knew it, too.

"I don't want to hurt you," Steve said.  "But I need that back.  Please don't make this harder than it has to be."

"Maybe I like things hard," Tony replied, the innuendo thick enough to drown in.  "If that kiss is anything to go by, maybe you do too."

Steve felt heat rising in his cheeks in spite of his best efforts.  He'd thought five years of desolation and loss, not to mention a war zone, would've cured him of his tendency to blush.  But Tony'd always had a way of getting under his skin.

"And maybe," Tony continued, eyes locked steadily on his burning face, "things are about to get a lot harder than I bet you bargained for.  And not in a good way."

It was an ominous gavel coming down between them; a death knell to Steve's waning confidence.  "What –"

"Loki," a voice roared, full-throated with the crash of thunder and fire.  "You will not escape again, brother."

"For God's sake," Steve sighed, turning to find Thor bearing down on their position, the glint of Mjolnir whirling around his hand.  Steve felt the call of the hammer ring through him like a voice whispering to his bones.  He resisted giving into it, straightening to his full height to face the Asgardian.  "I'm not your brother."

He meant to pull Tony with him, to use as a bargaining chip at least, but suddenly Steve found himself with a handful of suit jacket and little else.  He looked over to see Tony disheveled, down to his dress shirt and vest.  He'd slithered out of his tie and buttons, and there was a tantalizing glimpse of the reactor's light seeping through his white collar, open at the vulnerable hollow of his throat.

"Sorry," Tony said, watching him with serious eyes.  "I know we were having a moment there, but I like my throat where it is.  Rather not give you an opportunity to tear it out."

"I wouldn't," Steve said, feeling suddenly very tired.  "What, did you hit a panic button or something?"

Tony adjusted his collar, carefully straightening his cuffs.  "Or something."

"So can we expect the rest of the cavalry to come in for a landing shortly?" Steve asked dryly, backing up for a better vantage point.

"Depends who's in the neighborhood," Tony said, tilting his head from side to side in a pseudo-shrug.  "I didn't exactly tell them they were on-call before I came out here."

Steve tipped his head back to stare at the sky, sighing.  "Of course you didn't."

He dropped the jacket, squaring off to face both of them.  If he had to, he'd go through Tony first; without his suit, the scientist was a much easier target than Thor.

"Where is the Tesseract?" Thor demanded, close enough he no longer needed to roar, but apparently feeling the need to do it anyway.  "Do not make me ask you again."

"Hold up, point break," Tony said, patting Thor high on the chest as he drew level with them.  "Slow down.  I'm not sure this is actually who you think it is."

Thor looked flush with the triumph of catching his quarry in his sights.  The sight of him at the peak of his power was another balm to Steve's heart; another old friend brought back to a time before he'd been lost.  "Do not be fooled, Stark.  He wears the Captain's face, but it is illusion only.  I was with Captain Rogers myself not five minutes ago.  This is not him."

"That's not it," Tony said.  "I know it's not Rogers.  I'm just not convinced it's _Loki_."

"What would you know of Loki?" Thor growled, locking his eyes on Steve's face with bitterness.  "You spoke to him for minutes.  I have known him for centuries."

"Last time I mentioned performance issues, he threw me off a building," Tony retorted.  "This time?  He barely even blinked.  I'm telling you, this guy isn't acting like your brother.  Unless Loki recently swallowed an entire pharmacy's worth of Valium or something."

Thor was momentarily distracted.  "Valium?  I don't –"

"If you know I'm not him," Steve said steadily, provocatively, "then you know I can't stay here.  I have to go.  I need that watch to do it."

He stopped there, waiting.  As expected, Tony pulled out the digital band, probably feeling at this point he was safe enough with the God of Thunder standing next to him.

"What, this old thing?" Tony asked, turning it over expectantly, eyes alight with scientific glee.  "It's got some impressive protections on it, I'll give you that.  JARVIS can barely detect it's there, let alone what it _does_.  Who wrote the encrypt –"

Steve went for his hands, because Tony had predictable fight patterns; whether he was in the suit or not, he always used his hands to block.  It was a good instinct to have, a boxer's move, but Tony didn't really have the right mindset for it.  He too frequently left his torso open, and outside the suit the torso was a point of vulnerability for Tony.  In another life, that was a habit Steve would've trained out of him.

Tony didn't disappoint; he raised both hands instinctively, assuming Steve would go for his face.  Instead Steve feinted left, aiming for the ribs, and when Tony dropped in a desperate scramble to defend himself Steve clipped his wrist and grabbed for the watch as it fell from numb fingers.

Steve had just closed his hand on it when Mjolnir winged past him, crashing into Steve's shoulder with stunning force.  The watch slipped from his grasp as he went tumbling.  Again, he felt the call of the hammer as it brushed by him on its return to Thor, and again Steve had to shut down the instinct to reach for it, pluck it up out of the air, turn and show Thor exactly who he was challenging.

When he rolled back to his feet, Steve found Thor with his hand outstretched, electricity arcing in small tongues around him.  Tony was standing behind him, three additional steps away, a new wariness in his eyes.  The watch had vanished.

"It doesn't have to be like this," Steve said, planting his feet in a ready crouch.  "We could just go our separate ways."

Thor glowered at him, the distant rumble of a storm punctuating his glare.  "Not until you have answered for your crimes."

"The crimes are debatable," Tony said, shaking out his hand carefully.  "I'd honestly just settle for the answers right now."

"So would I," someone else said.  And when Steve turned around to find his own face staring back at him, he knew with certainty the jig was up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I expect this to go on for another 4-5-7 chapters? Maybe. We'll see. Then I have another plot bunny eating me alive I need to indulge. And Sunrise. Gah!
> 
> Too many writing projects. Never enough time...


	3. Chapter 3

Steve had counted the entire set of imperfections in the ceiling a total of thirty-six times.  There were a lot of them; too small for the average eye to see, but unmistakable to his augmented vision.  It made Steve worry about the structural integrity of Stark tower.

Steve worried about a lot of things; he'd had a lot of time to do it.  Seven days since the café, and the majority of that spent in a cell, with Steve's only entertainment the frequent coming and going of Avengers, each of them with more and more strident questions to ask him.  Steve hadn't actually been aware Stark tower had cells.  He suspected it hadn't, until exactly one week ago.

It didn't take the Avengers long to discover Steve had exactly two weaknesses; one of them obvious and the other less so.  Tony, who Steve saw once on the first day, and no more after that.  And Natasha.

Tony was a weakness Steve could afford.  Natasha wasn't.

"What do you think silence is going to buy you?" she asked softly in the low, gentle tone Steve had made the mistake of wincing at the first time she'd come to interrogate him through his bars.  She was sitting the wrong way in a chair, her chin resting on the tall back with her hands crossed at the wrist.  Her hair was pulled away from her face in a short tail, and had been ever since he'd turned away when she'd tucked both ends behind her ears, watching him with eyes that missed absolutely nothing.

He'd taken to closing his eyes whenever she came with more questions, because it was easier on his heart that way.  And there was less chance he'd give something unexpected away.

"We found the Scepter," she continued, coaxing, cajoling him along, inviting him into her confidence.  Steve resisted.  Barely.  "It was a clever puzzle.  Want to tell me how you knew to set it?  Even if Clint told you about Budapest, he wouldn't have told you about the music box.  He couldn't."

She said it matter-of-factly, but Steve knew her well enough to hear the faintest hint of suspicion creeping into her voice.  She was still treating him like the enemy, still interrogating him like he was Loki, but she'd developed some doubts.  She didn't quite believe it anymore.

Steve probably could have used that; tried to turn it to his advantage.  But Steve couldn't tell them about the future, not even to substantiate his release, and unfortunately he had yet to come up with a better explanation for why he was walking around wearing one of their faces.

Possibly he should've let them go on thinking he _was_ Loki.

"How do you see this ending?" she said, after the silence had gone on so long Steve had actually lost track of the seconds and minutes.  He'd taken to counting them in his head, because if he didn't have something to occupy his attention he'd just end up fighting himself not to look, not to drink his friend in with wistful eyes.  "If you don't speak to us, you'll speak to SHIELD.  You don't want to speak to SHIELD."

Steve really didn't.

"Do you think I'll leave sooner if you say nothing?" she asked a while later.

But that wasn't the problem.  The problem was that Steve didn't _want_ it to end.

She saw that too, of course.  That was why she stayed an extra hour, just sitting with him, wounding him with nothing more than silence.

Steve couldn't have answered Natasha even if he'd wanted to.  He had no idea how this was going to end.  His only guess was: Badly.

When she left, Steve half expected Clint to come in on her coattails.  Those two were never far apart, and they did that a lot; tag-teamed him to see if they could get him to bend under the pressure.  Steve hadn't yet, but he'd come close more than once.

But Clint didn't come.  No one did.

Which was almost worse, really.  Difficult as it was to be questioned by old friends, at least that meant something to fill the hours.  When they left Steve alone, with nothing but three walls and a set of bars for company, he ended up with far too much time to think.

Fortunately, in this tower at least, being left alone didn't mean quite the same thing as it would have elsewhere.

"JARVIS," Steve said, knowing the A.I would be listening.

Quiet reigned for a few moments; maybe an attempt to throw him off the scent, or more likely JARVIS snitching to Tony that Steve had finally broken his silence.

"JARVIS, I know you're there," Steve said patiently.

JARVIS filtered in over a hidden intercom, his voice seeming to come from everywhere and nowhere.  "Do you require something?"

"A lot of things," Steve said, meaning it.  "For now though, I'll settle for making a food request.  I'm done with the gruel and generic mystery meat."

"I've been advised to tell you special order privileges are reserved for paying customers," JARVIS said a few seconds later.

"Tell Tony the upper left quadrant of this cell has a structural flaw he should probably fix and that if he doesn't want me breaking down the door and going to get some myself, I'd appreciate an order in."

Another pause, shorter this time.  "Mr. Stark requests that you refrain from willfully damaging more property."

Steve smiled, imagining threats of bodily harm in place of those polite words.  "That's not what he said."

JARVIS ignored that.  "A delivery of pizza has been requested.  You will be provided a portion momentarily."

"Thanks," Steve said.  "JARVIS, how's the city doing?  The restoration efforts?"

Last time, Steve had stayed in New York a full month following the attack.  It still hadn't been enough, but SHIELD had other priorities, other missions, and he hadn't questioned the need to distribute their help in a variety of places.  In retrospect, Steve could have benefitted from asking more questions of the spy agency holding his reigns even seventy years after they'd created him.

"The city remains in a state of disorder.  Mr. Barton suggests that you be asked to 'fix what you broke'."

"If I could, I would," Steve murmured, remembering the rising death toll.  It'd taken almost six months to fully restore city infrastructure, and that was with Tony's company financing the build.  Managing social aid had been a whole different story, well outside the Avenger's limited manpower.  "Anything else you can tell me?"

"No," JARVIS said, almost apologetically.

"What about if I wanted a few unrelated updates?  Have those been restricted?"

"Please clarify what information you are seeking."

"The Mets," Steve said, because it was amazing how the little details started to matter when you lost everything.  Steve couldn't remember the last time he'd seen a baseball game; well before Thanos had done his work, and yet it wasn't until the chance to see them had gone that Steve came to regret it.  Hindsight worked in mysterious ways sometimes.

JARVIS was silent for long enough Steve wondered if Tony had reigned him in, cut off access, and the thought was a painfully lonely one.  Steve wrapped his hands around the bars of his cage and considered breaking them.

"What do you wish to know?" JARVIS asked.

Steve closed his eyes, relieved, and counseled himself to patience.  "Do you have audio from the latest game?  Or any game, really."

"I do," JARVIS said, and a moment later the cell crackled to life with the audio broadcast.

Steve settled back, listening to the announcers welcoming the viewers and the rundown of sponsors, the first rolling start on the sports commentary.  The lack of a visual didn't bother him; Steve had grown up listening to games on the radio, and this was almost painfully reminiscent of that. 

Steve closed his eyes and listened for hours to the world spinning by in sports metaphors and game stats and the distant cheering of crowds.  It felt nostalgic, and refreshing, and wholly uncomplicated. 

It felt like home.

Tony came by the next morning, as Steve had expected him to.

"Stop harassing my A.I," was the first thing he said when he stepped out of the elevator.  He was dressed more casually today, unfairly attractive in some kind of band shirt with a ratty collar, jeans and sneakers.  He had a smudge of motor oil across his left ear and cheekbone.  Steve tried to shut down the part of his brain that immediately started weighing the merits of Tony in casual clothing versus Tony in formal clothing.

There was no way to win that comparison, anyway; both styles suited Tony.  It was only the context that changed.

"I wasn't harassing him," Steve said, watching Tony approach.  "I was talking to him."

Tony frowned at him suspiciously.  "I thought you didn't want to talk.  Isn't that the whole reason our dynamic duo keeps coming in and out of here like it's a revolving door?  You need to give Romanov something soon, by the way.  Or you can expect Fury to make an appearance before too long."

"You haven't told SHIELD yet?" Steve asked, surprised.

"Technically, we have," Tony said.  "Romanov and Barton _are_ SHIELD.  Rogers too, really.  He's more inclined to keep mum on your whereabouts, though.  If SHIELD moves you, he'll never find out what you meant about Barnes."

"Where has he been?" Steve asked, thinking back on his own atypical absence.

"Oh," Tony said, and the casual disdain in his voice had an edge to it; something flat and poisonous.  "Here and there.  You know how it is."

Steve didn't, but he got the feeling it was a topic he didn't want to touch with a ten foot pole.

"I guess I'll have to give Natasha a few crumbs, then," Steve said. 

"Unless you're looking for a change of scenery," Tony said.  "Fair warning, your next cell probably won't be half as luxurious as this one."

Steve looked around, examining the bars with interest.  "Luxury isn't exactly the word I'd use.  Thanks for the pizza."

"Thanks for asking for it so _politely._ "

"Always my primary concern," Steve said, straight-faced.  "Politeness."

"Liar," Tony said, shaking out his wrist for emphasis.

The accusation, mildly leveled as it was, shouldn't have hit Steve like a runaway train.  But it did.  He had to turn away a moment, readjust his worldview to remind himself of who he was, who Tony was.  Why Steve was here; why he needed to _not_ be here.

Tony went on without pause in spite of Steve giving the game away, because unlike Natasha, Tony's specialty lay in machines and not people.  "You know, for someone who was so eager to proclaim his innocence, you were quick to clam up once we jammed you in here.  What gives, Rock of Ages?"

"I didn't say I was innocent," Steve said mildly.  "I said I wasn't Loki."

"I know," Tony said.  "I believe you."

He meant it.  Steve could read the sincerity, the certainty, in the lines of his face, the tiny frown at the corners of his eyes.  He believed Steve in the same way that Natasha was coming to believe Steve; aware of the possibility of truth but not exactly cognizant of what that truth might be. 

Steve leaned into the bars of his cell, curious.  "Why?"

"Why do I believe you?  Well, you don't look a thing like him, for one."

"Tony."

The scientist shrugged, sliding both hands into his pockets, propping himself up on the wall.  "Your behavior, your manners, the fact you haven't tossed me into moving traffic and that you're graciously allowing yourself to be detained in a cell half the size of my walk-in closet."

"Loki's let himself be captured before," Steve cautioned before he could help himself.

"No more alien armies or blue-eyed zombies coming to his rescue," Tony reminded.  "Not that he needed rescue, from the looks of things.  Asgardians really pack a punch, adopted or otherwise."

"So that's it?" Steve asked, not quite believing.  "Avoid throwing you off buildings and put in the occasional please and thank you?  That's enough?"

"Loki said please," Tony corrected.  "He just said it with irony.  And while there is _something_ ironic about you, it's not your delivery."

That last was said very pointedly.  Steve leaned into the bars, wondering if he might be able to entice Tony close enough to grab.

"What is it you think you know?" Steve asked.

Tony ambled closer, each step deliberate and calculated.  "There's a betting pool going on downstairs.  The reigning theory is still Loki, or one of Loki's minions in disguise, but I think Barton pitched the idea of you being a clone."  He stopped, well out of Steve's reach.  "It's a good theory, helped by the fact the government's been trying to clone Steve Rogers since before he went into the ice and lost them the only sample they had of the super soldier serum."

Steve blinked, interested and more than slightly alarmed.  "Really?"

"Yep.  Don't worry, no success stories from what I can tell.  Unless you're it, in which case: Congratulations."

Steve looked down at himself in consideration.  "I don't feel like a clone.  Could you tell if I was?"

"Maybe," Tony said.  "Possibly.  I tried checking for it in your DNA profile, but nothing unusual showed up, apart from the whole super soldier thing.  Which, by the way, on a cellular level looks really weird under a microscope.  I'm just saying."

Steve frowned.  "Where did you get a sample of my DNA to profile?"

"Funny you should ask," Tony said, pulling out his phone and unlocking it.  "There's pictures of the extraction process all over the internet at this point."

When Tony turned the phone to face him, Steve could see a crisp image of the two of them locked in a very passionate kiss.  Tony was dangling from Steve's grip, clearly off balance, and at one point the expression on his face had probably been surprise.  But the photographer had gotten lucky; at the snap of the picture, Steve could see pleasure had started to crest over Tony's face, in the flutter of long eyelashes and the slack grip of his hands on Steve's wrists. 

Steve could hardly look at his own face, which had been immortalized with an expression that was three parts desperation and one part something Steve wasn't interested in naming.

"Didn't know you could test DNA from a kiss," Steve said, fighting down the heat in his face.  All over the internet.  That wasn't a surprise, necessarily, but it was something Steve hadn't expected to be dealing with.

"Probably can't," Tony said, "seeing as your tongue spent most of its time in my mouth.  Talk about contaminated samples.  I took it from skin cells you left on my clothing."

"Right," Steve said faintly.  He looked at the picture again, wondering how many more of them might be out there.  He was guessing a lot.  "Sorry.  Forgot about the cameras.  I hope you're not taking too much flack for it."

"Please," Tony said.  "I've weathered worse scandals before breakfast on a Monday morning.  If anything, my reputation's improved by leaps and bounds."

Steve raised an eyebrow.  "How so?"

Tony smirked.  "Do you really need me to explain how Captain America pining after my incredible body earns me street cred?"

"It's not like I was wearing the costume," Steve said, trying not to think about that in too much intriguing detail.

"Didn't have to be.  Rogers' face has been plastered all over the news since the battle.  Didn't take a genius to make the connection.  Like I said: Incredible body, street cred."

"Congratulations, I guess.  And for the record, you used the word incredible, not me."

"Thanks," Tony said, watching him with amusement.  "My P.R department's already had sixteen separate requests for interviews.  We're trending.  Apparently, as far as the world is concerned, we've been having a passionate love affair since they dragged you out of the ice."

Only in Steve's dreams.  "All that from one kiss?"

"One _enthusiastic_ kiss," Tony said.  "Might've been different if I'd waved the white flag somewhere in the middle, but I got a bit lost in the moment.  I'm blaming you for that."

"Right," Steve said.  "Sorry for tempting you out of your common sense."

Tony smiled like it was maybe an accident.  He tried to wipe it away before Steve noticed, but that was impossible.  Steve noticed everything about Tony. 

"You know," Tony said, "I don't remember you being this funny."

"We didn't have a lot of time to chat before."

"If only Rogers had half this sense of humor."  Tony made a face.  "At this point I'd settle for him removing the stick he's got shoved up his ass."

"Well," Steve said as mildly as he possibly could, "they _did_ just pull him from seventy years in the ice.  Maybe you should cut the guy some slack."

"How long did it take _you_ to mellow out?" Tony asked, eyes sharp and cunning.

Steve hesitated, hearing the undertone of accusation there and wondering how he could possibly dodge around it.  "You're calling me mellow?  After that kiss?"

"That's a good point," Tony said, flipping to another picture to show Steve, this one more incriminating.  It had captured rather a lot more tongue than the previous.  "This is the one most of the news crews are using, by the way.  There are more tasteful ones out there, but why bother using those when they can use something much more scandalous?"

Steve had no chance of tamping down his blush this time.  "I'd apologize, but."

"You're not sorry?" Tony guessed.

Steve shrugged.  He'd felt halfway under water the whole time he'd been sitting across from Tony.  The overwhelming rightness of kissing him had eclipsed everything else, even the details of little things like their public location and the availability of camera phones.

"I'm sorry for not asking first," Steve offered, feeling the toe-curling shame of it somewhere in the pit of his stomach.

"Well, mutual consent wasn't a big thing in the 40's."

The shame curdled, leaving Steve painfully aware of his own shortcomings.  "It was wrong then, too.  I shouldn't have done it.  I really am sorry."

Tony watched him in silence for a long time, the agonizing stretch of seconds stabbing into Steve like needles.

"You really are him, aren't you?" Tony asked finally, with the sort of rich satisfaction Steve had come to associate with Tony solving impossible puzzles.

Steve had a good idea who he meant, but gamely pretended at ignorance.  "Who?"

Tony kept looking at him, and the force of it made something in Steve's chest constrict with longing.

Eventually Tony tired of just looking.  "Where did you come from?  Or should I be asking _when_?"

Steve kept his face still by exercising every ounce of self-control he had.  "When what?"

"Oh, please.  If you were planning to keep your time-travelling status a secret, you shouldn't go around denouncing the most likely alternatives to explain why you look exactly like someone already living in this reality."

Steve forced one eyebrow up, trying to look casual.  "And yet you're the only person who's come up with this theory so far.  Doesn't that tell you something?"

"It tells me I'm the only person you've been running around kissing in front of God and country," Tony said.  "Or at least, the only one you've been caught on camera with."

Casual went rapidly out the window.  "That proves nothing.  It was an impulse."

"A common one, according to my press."  Tony preened before allowing a more serious expression to take over.  "Cameras missed a step, though.  The part where you told me it was your last chance."

Steve closed his eyes, pinching the bridge of his nose.

Tony wasn't finished.  "The part where you said you'd miss me, even though you'd never met me.  Correction: even though _I'd_ never met _you_."

Steve grimaced, twisting one side of his mouth up ruefully.  "I guess it was a _bad_ impulse."

"Depends who you ask," Tony said.  "I didn't tell them that part, by the way.  The gang downstairs.  I figure there's only so much kiss and tell I should have to put up with when the whole world's already peeking in my bedroom window."

Steve felt like Tony had socked him in the stomach, the breath whooshing out of him unexpectedly.  "It was a public café."

"A fact you conveniently forgot about when you dragged me into your lap," Tony said.

The flummoxed feeling didn't go away, but it did migrate slightly south. 

Steve could see Tony taking in his flush and what it meant.  Steve inwardly cursed him for choosing _now_ to become more observant.

"I wasn't sure at first," Tony said, taking mercy.  "I'm still not.  But it's the best explanation I have."  He flipped his phone and when he turned it to face Steve again the pictures of them have been replaced by a picture of the watch.  "The technology that went into making this doesn't exist."

"That you know of," Steve stalled.

"That anyone knows of," Tony corrected. 

"What will it take for you to give it back?"

Tony looked around with interest, glancing at the ceiling again.  "Yesterday you threatened to break out of this cell for pizza.  If you want the watch that badly, why don't you go get it?"

Steve had thought about it; he'd even made a half-dozen plans to do just that, each one more convoluted than the last.  But this was Stark tower; the watch could be anywhere.  And Steve had no doubt that even if he could manage to get out of this cell quickly, the Avengers were on high alert and almost certainly prepared for an escape attempt.

Steve sighed.  "What made you go for the watch in the first place?"

Tony raised both eyebrows in question.

"You couldn't have known it was important before you took it," Steve said.  "So why take it?"

"I wasn't intending to.  But then you caught me off guard with your very un-Loki like behavior.  It was the most advanced piece of technology you had on you and worth a look, if nothing else.  Why did you sit yourself down across from my tower?"  Tony was watching him closely.  "Did you do it knowing I'd come out?"

Steve hadn't, but he couldn't deny that might've been a deeply buried wish at some point in his planning process.  "I was betting on Natasha.  She’s successfully dealt with Loki before, so she seemed the most likely candidate.  I wasn't expecting you to take your life in your hands and come out without the suit."

"We were on the ground this time," Tony said, just a touch defensive.  "And it's not the first face-to-face meeting I've had with Loki.  I figured there was only so much more he could try."

"You didn't think you got off lucky the first time and might want to avoid a repeat performance?"

"If I did that every time I narrowly avoided death, I'd never get anything done."

Steve conceded that with a nod.

Tony looked at his phone again, frowning.  "You must've been truly desperate to come here.  What happened?"

Steve shook his head.  "I can't tell you that."

"You absolutely _can_ tell me that," Tony said, pointing accusingly.  "It's not like you came back here to borrow a pound of sugar and a glass of milk.  You took some pretty heavy duty firepower away with you.  The fact you returned it is immaterial.  Who's to say you didn't send the whole future off-kilter?"

"Who's to say we did?" Steve said.

Tony looked up, and Steve realized he'd made a mistake.  "We?"

Steve coughed, gesturing quickly at the picture of the watch.  "Does that seem like something I could manage on my own?"

Tony looked at the watch again, something thoughtful in the lines of his face.  "It does seem a little beyond your capabilities.  No offense, Cap."

"None taken," Steve said dryly, "as long as you give it back."

"I can't give it back until you at least supply me with a rundown of what to keep an eye out for.  Let me explain how quantum realities work to you."  Tony held out his hands in a ball.  The ball flew apart in a silent explosion.  "According to current theory, any change in the primary timeline splits it into a parallel branch.  That reality can't be repaired just by going back with your tail between your legs and returning the goods you stole.  You might have doomed this reality faster than the timeline you lived in, and we deserve to know about whatever’s coming that got your panties in such a twist."

It was plausible.  It sounded likely, even.  Steve thought back, to the time when Bruce had returned from his part in the heist, the woman he'd talked to, the promise he'd made.  Tony hadn't challenged Bruce; Steve remembered that much, at least.  But he hadn't agreed with Bruce, either.  He'd just said they needed to work as fast as they could.

Steve wondered if Tony had known, then.  If he hadn't questioned only because there was nothing they could do to change it.

Tony must've seen the indecision on his face.  "Time travel, right?  It's a real bitch.  Enough to give even _me_ a headache."  He pocketed his phone while Steve watched, torn between two roads with no easy end.  "I'll hang onto the watch while you think about that.  But don't take too long, Spangles.  The butterfly effect is real, and it's even more real if you take into account the incredibly sensitive initial conditions involved in quantum mechanics. Physics is not to be messed with."

Tony vanished into the elevator, leaving Steve with a lot to think about.  When morning dawned the next day, he discovered he still had no answers.

In the midst of his indecision, he received another visitor.  Thor.  Full of blustering anger and righteousness and towering disappointment in Steve (Loki) for failing to cooperate when he so obviously should.  He used the hammer to emphasize his points, sometimes with more lightning than might be advisable indoors in a very tall, conductive building.

It was the hammer that finally did it.

"Brother," Thor eventually got around to growling, pointing at Steve emphatically.  "Enough of these games.  It is time to end this."

"I don't know how many different ways I can say this," Steve sighed, standing from his makeshift cot to approach the bars.  "But I'm not your brother."

Thor hardly seemed to hear him.  "Where is the Tesseract?"

"I feel like a recording," Steve muttered, then more loudly: "I don't know."

Thor brandished Mjolnir, the hammer glimmering in the low artificial light of Steve's cell.  Steve felt it reach for him and he put a hand on the bars, frustration tempting him to reach back.

"If you care nothing for this world," Thor said lowly, "then at least have care for ours.  With the Bifrost gone, we must return to Asgard before chaos descends on the cosmos.  The Mauraders have already begun to invade smaller settlements.  It will not be long before they descend into the Nine Realms."

Steve felt thoroughly out of place with this discussion and he made no effort to hide that.  "I have no idea what you're talking about."

Thor growled, the hammer making another threatening arc through the air.  "Loki, this is madness.  You must return the Tesseract.  Do this one thing, and all may come to a worthy end.  Do not force his hand, brother.  See reason."

Steve could feel the hairs on the back of his neck rising.  "Force whose hand to do what?"

Thor looked at him, and there was pity and such intense grief creasing his brow that Steve could feel his own eyes sting with loss.  There seemed to be a lot of that going around, lately.  "Your treason will not be forgiven, but it needn't end in your death.  Mother has spoken on your behalf.  If you do nothing further to antagonize him, Father may yet ease his judgement."

Steve had, admittedly, not given much thought to where Loki went once he was removed from Earth, nor what fate waited for him on Asgard.  He wondered now if he should've.

"Executed just like that, huh?" Steve said.  "Would he get a trial, at least?"

Thor scowled at him.  "Do not jest.  You _will_ face punishment for your crimes."

"Good," Steve said.  "And not what I asked.  I take it there's no jury of peers for capital crimes where you come from?"

"What nonsense is this?" Thor asked, stabbing one hand in his direction.  "I will not be distracted.  The Tesseract, Loki!"

"I don't have the Tesseract," Steve explained lowly, patiently, privately thinking even if he did he certainly wouldn't hand it over to Thor in this state.

"Where have you sent it off to this time?" Thor demanded.

"If I knew, I'd tell you," Steve said, which was only partially true.  "But I'm not Loki, and I don't."

"Have care, brother," Thor said lowly, "lest punishment for your crimes begin now."

Steve looked at that aggressively pointed hand, frowning.  "I think Asgard needs to work on its legal system."

Thor roared something at him.  Steve lost track of the words, garbled and loud as they were, because Thor took a swing at the bars of Steve's cell and, either by accident or design, crashed Mjolnir right through them.  Which might've been fine, except then he didn't check his swing and slammed it right through the adjoining wall and into the ceiling.

Steve heard something crunch, something that sounded important.  That was proven a second later when the ceiling above Steve gave a low, wobbling groan and started to cave in.  Steve dodged out of the way and leapt through the hole in the bars, coming up around Thor on the other side.

They both watched in disbelief while the floor above Steve's makeshift prison came collapsing into the room.  It took a while.  When it stopped, the two of them took in the utter disaster of Steve's cell with identical expressions of dismay.

"You really need to watch where you swing that thing," Steve said at last, into the silence.

"I was provoked," Thor objected, still staring, before he turned to glare at Steve full in the face.  He waved Mjolnir, scowling.  "Do not think you can escape, brother.  Another cell will be found for you."

Steve put one finger on the hammer, tipping it out of his face.  "Like I said.  Watch where you put that."

Thor was looking between him and the cell as though he wondered whether he might manage to stuff Steve back inside it before anyone could notice.

"JARVIS," Steve said, resigning himself to damage control, "what floor are we on?  Do we need to be concerned this collapse is going to trigger another one somewhere else in the tower?"

Thor looked up, the apprehension on his face saying plainly he hadn't considered that.

"I am restricted from telling you your exact location," JARVIS said politely.  "However, it's unlikely there will be further damages resulting."

The wall and ceiling gave a shuddering screech and slumped another foot into the room. 

"How unlikely?" Steve asked, while they both backed away toward the elevator.

"Somewhat," JARVIS admitted.  "Please step back.  Mr. Stark and Agents Romanov and Barton will be joining you shortly."

Of course they would.  Everyone in one place; one big unhappy family.  This would be interesting.

"You busted my tower," Tony complained the second they stepped out of the elevator.  "Why did you bust my tower?"

"I didn't," Steve said, staring straight ahead.

Tony took that as his cue to glare at Thor, who glared back.

"You see what perils there are containing criminals from Asgard, Tony Stark," Thor said, as though it had been someone else swinging that hammer in anger.

" _Anyone_ from Asgard," Steve said under his breath.

Thor pointed Mjolnir at him.  "Have care, brother.  It is your defiance which keeps us here, not mine."

Steve moved the hammer away again with one single, irate finger.  "I keep telling you, I'm not your brother."

"And I keep telling you, I believe him," Tony said in agreement, examining the hazard zone in front of him.

Barton looked suspicious.  But Natasha, tellingly, said nothing.

"Then you are a fool," Thor said, addressing Tony.  "My brother's mischief is legendary."

"I don't doubt that," Tony said.  "Or that this guy's a legend.  I just doubt he goes by the name Loki."

Thor roared something again, gesturing emphatically at Steve, then Tony, the hammer swinging perilously close to doing someone a major injury.  And that was when Steve decided he'd had enough.

"I told you," Steve said, calling with something deep in his gut until the hammer turned its attention to him, eager and willing.  He caught it as it arched through the air, feeling it smack into his palm with viscerally satisfying triumph while Thor staggered three disbelieving steps away.  "You need to watch where you put this."

Needless to say, everything became very chaotic after that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry I haven't had a chance to respond to anyone's kind comments! I'll try to get around to that soon. Cheers!


	4. Chapter 4

"You could've warned me you were about to break Thor's brain," Tony muttered two days later, after all the screaming and shouting had finally died down and the Avengers had decided they could have reasonable conversations again without breaking the furniture.

"You were the one who wanted me to come clean about things," Steve whispered back, amused.

"That was before you gave our resident thunder god a crisis of faith."

"You'll have to be more specific next time."

Tony sighed, slumping down in the seat next to him.  "Maybe just focus on making sure there isn't a next time."

Steve watched as Natasha and Clint argued with hushed words at the far end of the table.  On one side sat Bruce, fortified with three cups of calming herbal tea.  Next to him was Thor, looking as shell-shocked as Tony implied; the wide eyes and incredulous shock had yet to subside, leaving Steve to awkwardly navigate the silent disbelief of a despairing Asgardian (again).  At least this time Thor hadn't spent five years in exiled mourning trying to forget who he was.  Yet.

On the other side of the table was Captain America, in full costumed regalia with everything including the helmet in place, shield at his side while he sat at careful attention.  At any other time, Steve might've considered that an intimidation tactic; an effort to present a severe, uncompromising front.  But Steve knew that wasn't quite right, because he could see the poker straight posture and hands locked rigidly together so they wouldn't shake.  Thor wasn't the only one dealing with his worldview being knocked off-center.

Tony leaned forward, banging an empty coffee cup like a gavel against the table.  All eyes turned to him, though Steve watched one set skip immediately away and had to wonder what'd happened between Tony and Steve's counterpart to result in such grim rejection.

"I call this meeting to order," Tony announced, the tightening of his fingers telling Steve he'd noticed the snub.  "The floor is now open to questions, as long as those questions result in no further damage to my tower.  That means you, God of Property Destruction."

Thor acknowledged that with a halfhearted glare before fixing his gaze unerringly on Steve again.  Steve blinked back at him slowly.

"Stark says you've come from the future," Natasha said bluntly, never one to hold back when it mattered.

"I'm still banking on him being a clone," Clint muttered.

Tony waved them both down.  "I didn't say he'd come from our future.  I said he'd come from _a_ future.  There's a difference."

"Probably a big difference," Bruce put in, turning to face Steve directly, "unless a version of you came back in your original timeline and also ended up an unwilling guest in this tower?"

"I wouldn't call myself unwilling," Steve said mildly.  "If I'd wanted to leave, I would've.  This tower isn't exactly secure."

Tony nudged him warningly with the mug.  "What is it with people insulting my tower?  This is a great tower.  It's just not built to withstand gods and super soldiers."

"Exactly," Steve said.

"Taking at face value that you're the same Steve Rogers," Natasha said quietly, drawing Steve's attention back to her.  "We have to assume you would only come here because there was no other choice.  What happened in your world that sent you into ours?"

Steve winced, feeling the blunt weight of that question settling heavily across his shoulders.  "I can't tell you that."

Tony's gavel tapped down twice again, annoyed.  "We've been over this."

"I shouldn't tell you that," Steve amended. 

"That might be true," Bruce said, shrugging defensively when several pairs of eyes turned to him accusingly.  Defensive was never a good look on Bruce, and the eyes quickly turned away again.  "I'm just saying.  The contamination's already done, sure.  But do we really want to compound it?  When we start asking questions about the future, where do we stop?  What if knowing the answers leads us down a worse path?"

"Conjecture," Tony complained.  "That's paradoxical reasoning."

"Only because proving it means we'd have to live it.  Maybe he really shouldn't say anything."

"There's lots of things people shouldn't do when they stumble into the past," Tony said.  "Top of the list: Steal things that don't belong to them."

"Aye," Thor muttered, and Steve guiltily recalled holding onto the hammer a few seconds longer than was strictly necessary before giving it back.  To Thor, those extra seconds had probably felt like a lifetime.  It said something that he'd chosen to leave Mjolnir behind today; the hammer was conspicuous in its absence.

"Sorry," Steve told him, genuinely apologetic.

"What use did you put the Scepter to?" Thor asked, ignoring that.  "It is a powerful weapon, to be sure.  But to return through time to retrieve it?"

"And how'd you lose it in the first place?" Clint asked.

"See?" Bruce wanted to know.  "This is exactly what I meant."

"So let's not get lost asking the unimportant questions," Natasha suggested.  "Ask about specific, targeted information designed to identify any coming dangers we should be prepared for."

"And who decides what constitutes a danger we should prepare for?" Bruce demanded, starting to look slightly frazzled at the edges.  "You?  SHIELD?  Are you planning to make a different room for me in another flying fortress?"

Even Tony looked discomfited by that.  Everyone fell into uneasy silence.

"What did you mean about Bucky?"

Steve flinched at the name, even though he hadn't meant to, and he saw Natasha and Clint noticing that.  He looked up to find his counterpart staring directly at him for the first time, familiar blue eyes in a younger face hardened with bleak determination.

"Yeah," Tony drawled beside him, and blue eyes turned away, hurting, and not only from Bucky.  Steve felt his own eyes widening with understanding.  "What _was_ all that about Barnes, Captain Silent-America?"

Steve struggled for a moment, needing to speak, needing to fix the terrible wrong happening to his friend; recognizing that doing so meant stepping over a line in the sand he couldn't come back from.

"I meant what I said," Steve muttered.

"Which means what?" Natasha asked, pouncing.

Steve took a deep breath and let it out slowly.  He wouldn't be able to do this by half measures.  There was no way he could change only what he wanted to, what was personally relevant to him.  That was too much responsibility, too much power for any one person to have.

He'd have to change none of it.  Or all of it.

"It means he opened Pandora's Box," Tony said, recognizing his indecision for the opportunity it was.  "And now he's not sure how to close it again.  Or if he even wants to."

"Thanks Tony," Steve said, sighing.  "It's nice to know I can count on you to call me out no matter when we are in the timeline."

It was the beginning of something.  Steve just wasn't sure what.

~*~*~*~

It took an hour before the Avengers were ready to break from their increasingly frustrated questions, and Steve was allowed to relocate to his guest room.  Tony snagged a second cup of coffee and tried to make an immediate break for his workshop, but Steve intercepted him, dragging him politely back for a much-needed discussion.

"Wow," Tony commented after being yanked halfway through the tower, into and out of an elevator, and deposited in Steve's new living room.  "If you wanted to get me alone that badly, you know you only had to ask, right?  I really am that easy."

Steve forced himself to ignore that.  "You and your Steve Rogers.  What happened there?"

Tony's casual merriment vanished, replaced by flat antagonism.  "Nothing happened there.  Why?"

"Because he can barely stand to look at you," Steve said, probing.  "And I never had that problem.  Where has he been this past week?  I thought he'd be first in line to question me.  I know I would've been."

Steve thought back, but he couldn't remember having any particular level of hostility with Tony at this point in time.  In fact, after the New York battle they'd grudgingly bonded over a shared love of shawarma and saving lives, completing what was necessary for the city's restoration in relative peace.  And afterwards, Steve had gone on his way across the countryside, rejoining SHIELD in DC shortly thereafter.

Tony looked mutinous and unhappy.  "Today's the first time he's stepped foot in the tower since we dragged you into it.  Romanov convinced him until we could sort out the truth from the lies he wouldn't do anyone any good poking at hornet's nests."

Steve raised two skeptical eyebrows.  "And he believed that?"

"I wouldn't go that far.  But Barton backed her up, and Rogers let himself be moved off the board like a good little soldier."

Steve heard the scathing criticism, blistering with more than just playful rivalry, and leveled a look at Tony that demanded answers.

"What?"  Tony raised his hands peacefully.  "I'm just saying he _excels_ at following orders and minding the rules."

"About as much as you excel at breaking them," Steve said mildly.  "That's the whole story?"

Tony took an unnecessarily long drink of his coffee, ending it with a glare into the rapidly diminishing depths.  "Sure is.  Why wouldn't it be?"

"Good question."

"Don't look at me like that," Tony warned.  "It was nothing I did.  If anything, it's your fault."

"My fault?"

"If you hadn't kissed me, none of this would've happened."

Steve thought that was probably true.  There were a lot of things that could be laid at the feet of that kiss.  Steve wished that meant he could regret it more.  He didn't. 

"None of what?" he asked.

Tony took two steps back, flicking his phone out of his pocket and scrolling rapidly through the screens.  When Tony turned it to face him, Steve could see it had some kind of news website on it.  The front page picture was a familiar one; Steve and Tony, with their mouths extremely occupied.

"You know the world's going to hell," Tony said, "when two guys making out in a café gets more coverage than restoration efforts after an alien invasion.  We were on the six o'clock news the day we brought you in.  Rogers turned so green when he saw it I thought he was going to vomit in the kitchen sink.  He took off running before they could even get to the end of the story and he's been avoiding me and my big ugly tower like the plague ever since."

Steve grimaced, realization striking.  Of course.  Eleven years and the paradigm shift of a new century had given Steve a lot of room to distance himself from old prejudice and a lifetime of denial.  But the Steve Rogers of this time hadn't had that opportunity yet, and no doubt his self-image had just taken a massive, shocking blow.

"Don't hold it against him," Steve said quietly.  "Homosexuality wasn't big in the 40's.  A lifetime being told what he wanted was wrong, and that wanting it anyway would get him thrown in jail.  That's not going away any time soon."

Tony held up the phone, waving it and its unfortunate pictures in Steve's general direction.  "He's not in the 40's anymore, and he doesn't get to pass judgment because of his own hang-ups."

"He isn't," Steve said with certainty, knowing himself at least well enough to say that.  "He just doesn't know what it means."

"Then maybe he should take his freak out somewhere more private," Tony muttered.

"That's exactly what he's doing."

"You're not going to make me feel sorry for him," Tony warned, though Steve thought from the softening around his eyes that maybe a few tendrils of sympathy had wormed their way through.  "Guy's an ass.  You won't convince me otherwise."

"Guy is me," Steve reminded.

"There's no accounting for shared genetics."

Steve had to smile at seeing the raw, stubborn pride Tony had always worn like battle armor across his chest and shoulders, front and center for the entire world to see.  Much like his arc reactor.

It had taken Steve too long to realize Tony's façade was as solid and flimsy as any other; breakable with the right touch, the right word.

"What?" Tony asked, seeing the look on his face.

"Nothing."

Tony watched him suspiciously for a while, finishing off his coffee.  "If I ask you a question about the future, are you going to tell me you can't answer it?"

Steve hesitated.  "I might."

Tony took that for encouragement.  "You and me.  Or me and him.  Semantics, I guess.  But is that a thing?  I feel like it both was and _wasn't_ a thing."

Steve looked away, out the window and toward the horizon.  He had no idea how to answer that question, really.  There was too much to say.  "It's a long story.  Hard to explain."

"Try," Tony suggested, and when that garnered no response, continued with: "That was the first time you kissed me, right?  Any version of me."

Steve ducked his head, running a hand over the back of his neck.  "That bad, huh?"

"That good," Tony corrected, tipping his head when Steve looked over in surprise.  "You kissed me like it was something you'd been waiting years to do."

Steve twisted one half of his mouth up.  "Sounds about right."

"Wow," Tony said, and Steve might've been ashamed except that when he looked over Tony was staring at him with something that looked very much like hunger.

Steve cleared his throat, his own hunger rising rapidly to match it.  "Like I said.  Long, complicated story."

"I'd love to hear it some time," Tony said, and even seemed to mean it.

"Even just as friends, we were on the outs more than we weren't.  Oil and water."

"More like oil and fire.  Which is okay too, sometimes.  Some of the best sex has more than a little fire to it."

Steve stalled on a response to that, blinking rapidly.  "I'll keep that in mind."

"You do that."  Tony set down his mug, watching.  "But that's not where you and I got to, obviously.  These hang-ups of Rogers – how long did it take you to work through them?"

Steve sighed, amused by the irony of it, if not the tragedy.  "It took me more than ten years to work up the courage to kiss you."

"Jesus," Tony blurted, a disbelieving smile twitching at his mouth.  "Ten _years._ So I guess I won't be waiting around for that to happen anytime soon."

"No," Steve agreed.  "You had other options."

Tony looked too neutral at that.  "Did I?"

"Miss Potts," Steve said, continuing when that didn't make Tony do more than blink.  "I mean.  Aren't you and she?"

Tony waited, but Steve honestly wasn't sure how to complete the sentence.

"Me and she, what?" Tony prompted finally.

"You're dating," Steve said very awkwardly.  "Aren't you?"

"We were making an attempt at dating," Tony said. 

"Oh," Steve said, having known it but feeling the disappointment anyway.  "That's good."

"Notice my emphasis on the past tense there."

Steve could feel his heart simultaneously leap and also sink right into the soles of his boots.  "What happened?"

Tony flapped his hands irritably.  "What do you think happened?  Social media blew up about me having another leading lady in my life.  Oh, sorry, leading man."

Steve sat down heavily, stunned.  "She wouldn't leave you over that.  She'd give you the benefit of the doubt."

Tony made a face.  "She already did.  Like I said, I didn't exactly fight you off at that café.  Pepper can forgive a scandal the media makes up.  She can't forgive one that's truer than it isn't."

"But it's  _not_  true," Steve said desperately.  "We're not having an affair.  It was one kiss."

"One  _enthusiastic_  kiss," Tony reminded.

Some of the genuine panic must've shown on his face because Tony waved him off.  "Relax, Cap.  Pep and I blew hot and cold even before we added romance into the mix.  This'll pass, and we'll get together again, or we won't."  Shrewd eyes passed over him, seeing things there that Steve couldn't even begin to imagine.  "I take it from your reaction we made it last, where you're from?"

Steve realized then the power he could wield simply by saying nothing.  Tony would interpret that as guilty silence, or as reluctance to break bad news, because he'd always been a cynic and he had too little faith in his own happiness.  The idea that he'd failed with Pepper would grow from a suspicion to an absolute certainty in his mind, and it would be like an open wound, festering.  Given enough time, it would probably consume and destroy any chance of a successful relationship.  And all Steve had to do to ensure that was keep his silence.

"For better or worse," Steve made himself say, before he could think better of it.

" _Really_?" Tony wrinkled his nose.  "Marriage?  I wouldn't have called that.  I thought for sure if I ever got around to asking she'd do the smart thing and tell me no, or at least end up leaving me at the altar or something."

"You two kept it low key," Steve said, unwillingly reminded of the first time he'd seen the nuptial announcement in the news.  That was before the universe has gotten a little dusty.  The pain of it had been real, but the thing Steve remembered most vividly was the hopelessly despairing happiness that had come along with it.  Tony deserved to be happy.  Steve couldn't begrudge him that life, and he tried not to think he was petty enough to begrudge Pepper either. 

Steve had gotten very good at lying to himself over the years.

"I don't think there was actually an altar to leave you at," Steve finished.

"That explains it," Tony said.  "I can't see Pepper eloping, though.  She likes her shoes too much.  Did I do well by her, in this future of yours?  I didn't leave her too heartbroken at the end?"

Steve gave Tony a flat, speaking look.

"What?" Tony asked, blinking innocently.  "It wasn't a facetious question.  I'm genuinely interested in the answer.  Did she cry at my funeral?  I did have one, right?  Since I'm dead where you come from."

The tide of grief surged unexpectedly to the forefront, doing its best to drag Steve under.  He resisted, pressing his lips together until he could speak steadily.

"What makes you say that?" Steve asked.

In answer, Tony tapped the side of his phone twice against one of the side tables and dropped it into the docking station that appeared a second later.  With a flick of his fingers, the whole room was filled with holographic light.

Steve glanced around, taking in the beautiful expanse of it, pixilated and far more rudimentary than Tony's later designs, but no less impressive for all that.  Steve hadn't always been a fan of the future and its array of dangerous technologies, but he'd always been a fan of how Tony made technology into  _art_.

Tony gestured, dragging one of the holograms closer, manipulating it until it expanded to fill the whole room.  Steve sighed and shook his head, tilting back to stare at the ceiling.

"Don't roll your eyes at me," Tony said mildly.  "This was surprisingly difficult footage to come by.  Most of the city was without power during the invasion, and I think he made an effort to crash the network while you were actually in the tower.  Your Stark, I mean.  I couldn't find any useable recordings, not even of Loki taking off or Rogers confronting you on the fourteenth floor.  That was my first clue, actually."

Tony turned the hologram to make sure they could both see it, with its incriminatingly clear shot of Steve and Scott and someone who looked suspiciously like Tony Stark's older twin standing in an alleyway.  Tony set the hologram into motion, the silent pantomimes of their argument going on excruciatingly while Steve watched.

"No audio," Tony said, walking around the grainy footage of himself.  "But I think in this case a picture says a thousand words.  Don't you?"

"When did you get the footage?" Steve asked woodenly.

"Yesterday.  I had JARVIS scan every street camera from here to Hell's Kitchen and all the way around.  Caught a glimpse of you earlier in the week at that café with the really hipster wall mural, but it still took me a day to track down all the available footage going back a solid two weeks.  And I'll be honest: I didn't realize I needed to check my own security protocols until well after you guys had burgled my building."

"Is it really burglary if one of us owns the building?"

"Owned," Tony said, annoyed.  "Technically.  Guess I shouldn't be surprised you turned to a life of crime, though.  Not with the company you're keeping."

Tony came to stand next to Scott's furious, pixilated image.  With a wave of his hand he froze the scene and pulled another photograph into existence.  This one showed Scott holding up a placard with a series of numbers and identifiers on it, a miserably hollow look on his face. 

"Scott Lang has a nominally impressive background in electrical engineering," Tony said, spinning the image so he could see it better.  "Nothing outstanding, which makes me wonder how he gets tangled up in the future with whatever it is that sent you back here.  But the most interesting thing about him is the fact that he's currently serving a five-year sentence in San Quentin penitentiary for burglary and grand theft.  I hear he pulled a Robin Hood and stole from the rich to give back to the poor.  So my money's on him serving three, four years tops of that sentence."

"Delete that," Steve ordered, staring hard at the mug shot and only moderating his tone when Tony gave him a look of disbelief.  "Please.  It doesn't do him justice.  He's more than the time he served in prison."

Tony pulled the hologram closer, examining it from all sides before waving it away.  "I guess he'd have to be for  _you_  to work with him.  Nice to know you have some discretion when it comes to crappy life choices.  So, I was alive at this point, and somewhere between you winking out and coming back an hour later, I died.  If I were alive, I'd have given you better instructions than what you came here with.  More to the point, you'd probably never have come."  Tony looked at him with something like kindness in his face.  "And it wouldn't have been your last chance at that kiss."

Steve looked away, unable to answer.

"I made the watch, didn't I?" Tony asked, bringing up a new image.  An interior cross-section of the watch, its inner workings on display.  He flicked it, sending it spinning on an unseen axis, around and around and around.  "Never mind, you don't have to answer that.  I recognize my own programming signature.  I've been using the same one since I was sixteen.  It's the only reason I was able to break the encryption on this thing."

Steve sat up quickly, an ominous premonition sending whole armies of adrenaline into his veins.  "You opened it?"

Tony shrugged, tucking one hand into a pocket.  "Technically, Rogers opened it.  It wouldn't respond to input from anyone else."

Steve went cold.  He wrapped his hands around the arms of his chair numbly.  "What happened?"

"I learned a lot about inverted möbius strips and the planck scale."

" _Tony_ ," Steve said urgently, squeezing hard enough he could hear the wood creak in warning.

"Please refrain from damaging any more of my furniture," Tony ordered, waiting until Steve had reluctantly dropped his grip before continuing.  "Calm down, Spangles.  Nothing happened, obviously, or you wouldn't have run into your younger and much more patriotically dressed self earlier.  All it did was give me access to the design specs.  It's pretty impressive work, if I do say so myself.  Future-me is one talented son of a bitch."

"Yeah," Steve said, watching Tony's mixed pride and consternation with a painful smile.  "He really was."

"The world without me in it," Tony mused, sounding much too relaxed at the idea for Steve's peace of mind.  "What would that look like, I wonder?"

It looked like a place made smaller and quieter and much less, Steve wanted to tell him.  But he couldn't find the voice to say it.

"And you're sure you want to go back there?" Tony asked, raising his eyebrows, looking at Steve from beneath long, coy lashes.  "To that Stark-less place?"

"It's not a matter of want," Steve said.  "I have to go back.  There's nowhere else."  Not anymore.

Tony spun the hologram again.  "Well, you're not going _anywhere_ until you explain yourself to the SHIELD ninjas and Captain Sadpants downstairs."  Tony paused long enough to inspect him sharply.  "Is Barnes really alive or isn't he?"

Steve looked down.  He'd already told them either too much, or not enough.  And to tell them everything he had, and not to take it that very last step –

"He's alive."  Steve took a breath, held it, and decided it was time to see that declaration through to its inevitable conclusion.  "And there's something I need to tell you about him."

"Something you need to tell  _me_?" Tony asked, surprised.  "About  _Barnes_?"

"Yes."

Tony stared at him, searching his face for answers Steve didn't want to give.  "What could you possibly have to tell me about –"

"Not now," Steve blurted, raw with the anticipation of pain.  "Tomorrow, maybe?  Or the day after.  I'll tell you together.  I'll tell all of you together."

Steve would tell Tony this, because he ought to have done it in another life, and that was a reckoning the world should never have to live through again.

"Sure," Tony said, still watching him, bewildered.  "No problem.  It might be a trick getting Rogers back into the same room as me for more than ten minutes at a time, but we can leave that to Romanov.  I think she threatened to steal his shield if he didn't show up today."

"He'll show up for Bucky," Steve said.

Tony nodded an acknowledgement.  "Might also have to drag Thor in kicking and screaming.  I think our God of Sulking used up all his good manners today.  Pretty sure he'd happily pretend you didn't exist at this point if he could get away with it."

"He shouldn't have waved the hammer in my face," Steve said defensively.  "It's like he doesn't realize how much damage it can do."

Tony snorted.  "He realizes.  He just doesn't care.  I don't mean that in a bad way.  I just mean he's not used to being around puny humans with all their funny little quirks.  Like their fragile, breakable bones."

"Maybe you'll have to teach him."

Tony looked amused.  "Yeah, no.  Teaching old gods new tricks is well above my pay grade.  I'm just some guy in a suit of armor.  Take that off and I'm neither hero, nor threat.  You said so yourself."

Steve sighed, hearing the sting of a bitter hurt that Tony would never verbalize out loud except in cutting remarks meant to misdirect.  "I never did apologize for what I said under the Scepter's influence, did I?"

"Nope," Tony said.  "In fairness, neither did I.  So we're probably even."

Steve thought about Tony snapping his fingers so Thanos couldn't.  Thought about him making the choice to lay down on the wire so the whole world could crawl to safety overtop him.

"We're really not," Steve said softly.

Tony glared at him, the strangest expression of consternation wrinkling his nose.  "Do me a favor, would you?  Stop looking at me like that."

Steve blinked.  "Like what?"

"Like I'm someone I'm not.  Like I'm constantly surprising you in some incredibly obscure but somehow awesome way.  Whoever your Tony Stark is, or was, I'm not him.  I may never be him, and I'm not sure I want to be.  Apparently he dies at some point."

"Everyone dies," Steve said, surprised and stung.  "He just made it count."

"Lucky guy," Tony deadpanned.  "Look, the last thing I need is another impossible standard to live up to.  I have enough of those as it is."

"You only think it's impossible because everyone else says it is," Steve said.  "It's not.  Someone told me once that a good man knows the value of both strength and compassion."

Tony stared at him, searching his face for some hint of doubt or deceit.  Steve made sure to give him none.  "So you're telling me I'm a good man because at some undisclosed point in a future I'm never going to have, I learn compassion and die for a cause?"

"I'm telling you you're a good man," Steve said very slowly and very clearly, "because you are one."

Tony turned abruptly away, walking straight through the holograms so they dissipated and reformed around him.  He paced urgently for a minute around the furniture, moving in a crude circle, eventually stopping so he could stare with rigid attention out the window at the beautiful skyline.  Steve didn't interrupt, watching carefully.

Eventually Tony seemed to satisfy whatever impulse was running through his brain.  He turned around with a very determined expression and leveled his phone in Steve's direction again.

The pixilated world around them changed.  Suddenly Steve was faced with the image of himself and a dead man locked in a staring contest, intimately close and familiar, intent and focused only on each other.  Joined in a pact.

 _Do you trust me_ , Steve remembered Tony asking.

 _I do_ , Steve had replied. 

The warm hand he'd clasped so closely in his had burned like a brand.

"I'm going to propose a deal," Tony said now, in a voice that wasn't quite the same as the one Steve remembered, but was still somehow achingly _right_.  "It's a deal you're allowed to say no to, if you want."

"A deal?" Steve asked warily.

Tony nodded.  "Your watch is going to stay with me for another couple weeks."

" _Weeks_ –"

"Weeks.  That's how long I figure it'll take Romanov to break you with kindness and suck up all the information worth having in that futuristic brain of yours.  If it takes longer, so be it.  Either way, at the end of it you'll get the watch back and you'll be free to go on your merry way as if none of this ever happened. If that's what you want."

Steve hesitated, hearing something being deliberately unsaid.  "And?"

"And during those weeks, or however long it takes, I'm going to make myself available to you."

Steve stared at him, at the barest suggestion of a smile on that mobile, smirking face.  "Available to me?"

"Yep."

Steve waited, but nothing else was immediately forthcoming.  "And when you say available, you mean?"

"I mean available," Tony said simply.  "In whatever way you want to interpret that."

Steve stared at him for a long, stunned moment.  "Why?"

"Why would I make myself available to you in both the platonic and biblical sense?" Tony asked, though he obviously needed no clarification.  "Because I've been halfway in lust with Captain America since I was in my pre-teens, I'm not otherwise attached at the moment, and the whole world thinks we're already doing the deed anyway.  And you're planning to leave at some point.  And ten years is a decade too long to wait."

Steve kept staring, the breath knocked completely out of him.

"And you think I'm a good man, and look at me like no one else exists," Tony finished, like the words were being pulled out of him.  "You said it was your last chance?  Maybe it's the only chance.  How much are you willing to risk for it?"

Tony gestured at the image of the two of them locked together, frozen beyond the grip of time.  Then he stepped through it, the hologram cracking down the middle and fading away until all that was left was Tony Stark, real and alive, holding out one patient hand to Steve.  Waiting.

Steve took it. 

Not everyone got their shot at second chances.  Steve wasn't about to miss his.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't always think of Steve as having the "mayday - gay in 1940's!" hangup, but it was a fun element to throw into this story, so I'm running with it. 
> 
> Thank you everyone for your wonderful comments. I'm truly sorry I haven't been able to respond to them individually, but your thoughts and encouragement are cherished and appreciated. Cheers!
> 
> August 2019 Update: Sorry folks, Real Life has interfered in a big way, and I'm forced to put most of my writing projects on hold. I'll be taking them back on one at a time - for now that means I'm trying to finish Sunrise, and then I'll come back to this one. That may mean this fic is out or commission for some time. Eventually I'll get it done, but for now... my most sincere apologies!

**Author's Note:**

> Been a long time since I wrote anything this self-indulgent. I apologize because this is going to be fast-paced and hand-wavvy at times (not my usual style), since Endgame lacks some internal scientific/character consistency. So I'm basically winging it for fun with this. Sorry?
> 
> This is a plot bunny I really just need to get off my chest so I can go back to writing Sunrise. Credit to Fireheart, who told me that Marvel fanfic is cheaper than therapy. You are so right!!


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